Hey, this is actually quite interesting. I've heard of winnowing like this for covert channels before but not applied to this situation. It bears some thought.
That way they knew who I was, trusted me not to be cheating and let me carve through people when I was on a good run.
Maybe I misunderstood, but that's what I thought you were doing--playing against opponents of much lower skill level than you. If you're playing against competitive players, how could they possibly confuse you for a cheat?
People confuse better players for cheaters because their skill is so out of whack with their opponents' that they can't conceive of someone being that much better, without a cheat. But as far as I'm concerned, that's even worse: playing a game against people much worse than you, so you can feel like a big man, is almost the definition of pathetic. I don't really care if they're banned (incorrectly) as cheaters or (correctly) as bullies.
Seriously, man, you can't talk to these people. Like mindless zealots everywhere, they are a tarpit of illogicality; unthinking apologists for anything that comes down the pike. Something you don't like about the holy Macintosh (or emacs, or Python, or anything else that attracts this sort of person)? Must be something wrong with you. And everyone else. And their "ill-behaved" applications and fingers and minds.
They probably think the Thinkpad's little eraser will blow your finger off, too. And a scroll wheel? Man, that fucker will suck you in and grind you up. Focus follows mouse? Get the guillotine, monsieur!
There might be a few people here and there with different reasons. I ultimately decided the iPhone was too expensive, but if I had decided to get it I would definitely have tried to get on line at the AT&T store, because it would have been a gift for someone whose birthday is right now. I don't feel the need to have the latest and greatest thing. I did just get a Wii, but only because I happened to notice it sitting on the shelf.
I think Toy Story 2 probably tells you all you need to about these people, who are fat and smelly to boot.
If I were the designer or creator of something, I would want people to use and enjoy it. Cars should be driven, boats should be sailed, toys should be played with, wine and beer drunk and books read. God, if I ever publish a book, I would love for someone to ask me to sign their dog-eared, partly-ripped, nacho-cheese-sauce-on-page-40 copy.
The analogy that came to my mind was a seventeenth century naval gunnery crew taking down our first moon lander. There's no way I would bet on the lander.
I think it's more like a subcontractor of the construction company, under indirect ownership of a Chilean subsidiary, put graffitti on the walls, and then, egged on by junior-level employees (but not the permanent officers of the general contractor) made it more and more explicit. Then a third guy--Steve--came by and said, "hey, that's pretty funny, but it'll have to come out before the Japanese investors"--did I mention the Japanese investors?--"come over tomorrow." But the subcontractor thought it was so cool that instead of washing it off they carefully taped over it with some paper. No wait, paper is a terrible analogy, let's make it Tyvek house wrap. Yes, Tyvek house wrap... they put some of that over it and then painted over that.
After the building's launch, one of the neighborhood free spirits who's a big fan of the building--maybe security has noticed him hanging around, maybe they haven't: their lunch breaks are fifteen minutes shorter on this job than at their last one, so inevitably they feel less of an obligation to take a really good look at people hanging around. Well, anyway, this smelly hippie starts picking at the walls and finds this covered-up graffitti. He doesn't want to spoil the fun by just ripping the cover off, so what he does is start spreading the word in the smelly hippie underground (and also, this gets out to the underground comics scene and, through the coffee-house poseurs, to the rave and goth kids, much to the chagrin of the smelly hippie) about how to go to the building, pick off the Tyvek house wrap... you know, on second thought maybe it's not like Tyvek house wrap at all, maybe it's a tough, silicone-impregnated paper. Yeah, that's what it is.
So all these people are peeking under the Ty^H^Hsilicone-impregnated paper at this stuff and it starts to get out. The local building code review board gets in trouble because they approved the building and everyone starts a pie-throwing fight--yes, a pie-throwing fight is exactly right--at the press conference about the controversy.
I'm not sure you can make a blanket statement like that. Consider the subject at hand: video game marketing material. Doesn't it seem pretty likely that kids will want to consume any and all video game related material they can?
Personally I suspect the ESRB's demand to take down an AO-rated trailer has something to do with pre-existing agreements between the company, relating to its membership in ESRB, I don't really know of course, just guessing the situation is a little more complicated than might be suggested at first blush.
It's typical to allot roughly twice a movie's production budget on marketing and distribution (even setting aside "funny" Hollywood accounting). Similarly, the gross income of a movie is split with exhibitors. So with that rough rule of thumb, the production budget was $32M, marketing and distribution another $32M, for a total cost of $64M, and the studio saw $31M in their cut of the gross income.
Total, fresh from my ass back-of-the-napkin figures, but yes, the general idea is that Snakes on a Plane didn't do terribly well.
Seriously, thought, reality seems to disagree with you; just look at how most mythologies and stories, both ancient and modern, are about who kills and sleeps with whom.
Consider the qualifiers in the parent's post. "Graphic" sex isn't the same as "sex." There are plenty of stories of randy gods seducing women, but they are not graphic, in the sense that today's pornography is.
Similarly, I don't think the parent poster was saying that adults don't view pornography, just that they're not obsessed with it--and if they are, the nature of their obsession is immature. I pretty much agree with that view.
But what would you think if hired a builder to make your house and his team showed up carrying hand saws? Oh, and you are paying that team to hand-saw all the lumber...
What would you think of that builder?
I would think to myself: "Wow, that's like the construction equivalent of using C++."
I don't know how it works in New York, but in California, when I was a teenager with a summer job in a restaurant, in theory I was not supposed to serve alcohol.
Even if not encoded in the law--and I'll bet in at least some jurisdictions there is a general circumstance that could be applied for an additional penalty here--I think it would, overall, result in a more likely conviction and a more severe penalty. Any crime that seems worse to a jury is easier to sell to them, and the easier the sell the more likely the conviction, the less likely a plea-bargain (or the greater the penalty that needs to be agreed to in the bargain) and the greater the penalty that can be sought.
I guess you could think of that as market forces, of a kind, at work, rather than regulatory ones.
First off, I'll say that this sounds like an awful law: unconscionably vague, with ridiculous penalties for infractions. I wouldn't stand for it, but fortunately I don't think it will stand. And even more fortunately, I don't live in New York.
But if you argue against any sort of restriction like this (I'll leave aside for the moment whether it's a law or universal observance of a voluntary ratings board), what you're arguing for is decreasing the ability of a parent to decide what their kid will be exposed to. You're arguing for the "right" to sell whatever content you want to my kid without my knowledge.
Advocates of your position argue incessantly for parental responsibility. But that's not what you want. You want me to raise my kids your way (for example, in an irreligious way), exposing them to materials you think are harmless (for example, because I'm a prude and you're not). You want parents to deal with the question of violent video games in the way you think fit, not them. You're arguing to require me to allow my children to buy violent video games, no matter how young, no matter the content of the game, and not to make the decision for my family, as you suggest on the surface.
In a free society there is a tension between the society's responsibility to foster the upbringing of children, the rights of individuals and the rights of parents to be able to carry out their own responsibilities. I think reasonable people can probably agree that it's best to have no special restrictions for the most part, except for a few things that are generally agreed to be objectionable, in which case it's a parent's right to act as gatekeeper for their child and decide what possibly objectionable movies, weapons, drugs, video games go into them.
No one's rights are abrogated by having to prove age to buy liquor, cigarettes, weapons, pornography or other things generally agreed to be questionable for children. On the other hand, the idea of arguing for the absolute right to sell these things to young children without their parents' knowledge is pernicious.
I'd never support making potentially objectionable content illegal. I think the obscenity standards and laws we already have are too much, and the legal framework in which someone like Paul Reubens can be hassled for his collection of vintage magazines (as he was in California), or where it's illegal for an adult to even view "violent pornography" (as in the United Kingdom), or where sexy comic books are seized at the border (as in Canada), or where the government decides that some games may not be sold at all--to adults (as in Australia): these are all offensive to me and the notion of a free society.
But I hardly think having to ask for your violent porn and show you're of age counters anyone's rights. On the contrary, it results in much more being permitted at the extreme, and fewer restrictions on content producers overall. If game companies could be assured that their most violent or sexual games were never landing in the hands of minors, doesn't that free them further to create more violent, sexual or extreme content?
And shouldn't it be my choice about what I do in the game?
This is actually a very deep question in multiplayer games. Or rather, the answer is clearly "no," but the interesting question is where the limits are placed.
It would be interesting to actually have a structured study of this; as someone who has cleaned out public restrooms for a job it was my experience that the men's room was worse, invariably (for example, I have a hard time imagining that women's restroom have semen on the walls, and in that pair of restrooms there were never smears of shit where there wasn't supposed to be). But it would be nice to actually have an answer, rather than personal anecdotes.
You can't wrap your head around it, really? It seems pretty simple to me: sometimes you need it up, sometimes you need it down; she always needs it down. The toilet is used more often in the down position (even assuming equal bathroom use frequency, which of course isn't the case--she'll use it more), and since you just pissed, it's pretty likely the next person to use it will need it down. And that's not even really the point, the point is that the consequences of a "mistake" are much greater in the one direction (falling in) than in the other (having to wipe up the seat).
Now, you may not agree with the above (I like the lid down solution, myself), but to not understand it? That reveals a complete inability or unwillingness to see things someone else's way, even when it's logical.
For whatever reason, women have to piss more often than men.
Yes, I (a man) have fallen into the toilet. It's unpleasant enough that it makes sense to prevent it. The issue is not that the seat is more or less likely to be in the "right" position (though it probably is), it's that the consequences of a failure in the system are more unpleasant (wiping urine off the seat, assuming you miss, vs. falling in).
A closed toilet lid will not prevent a toddler from getting into it and drowning—it needs to be latched shut. Or you can decide you're not worried it and leave it open.
If you piss right after having sex, it'll kind of dribble out, because there is a valve over your bladder that closes during arousal and ejaculation, preventing urine from coming out. It takes a short while for it to relax. It's pretty disappointing if you know so little about how your urogenital system works to not understand this. In any case, there is of course no excuse for leaving urine on the floor, no matter how it got there.
As soon as children are capable of moving around on their own and getting into the toilet they're capable of lifting the lid. To prevent it, you need to latch the toilet seat down.
It's hard to say. The first versions of adventure, with elements taken straight from Tolkien, were only a few years off, and multiplayer worlds with Tolkienian elements only a couple of years after that. Were these developments predictable in 1968? Probably, but only by the right people, not the general public. I doubt the commercial culture around video games and low-cost end-consumer computers seemed all that visible at the time.
However, I don't see the conceptual difference between a video game and, say a role-playing or other sort of game, with respect to whether it was covered by a merchandising agreement. It's interesting that roughly the mid-1970s was the time of genesis for Colossal Cave Adventure, the first MUDs and Dungeons and Dragons; however, Dungeons and Dragons had its roots in miniature wargaming, which was well-established as a pastime since before Tolkien ever wrote his stories (H.G. Wells wrote some of the first rules for resolving miniature combat in 1913). I would be very surprised if no wargamers adopted the backdrop of Tolkien's fantastic wars and battles, especially as the rise in popularity of wargaming in the late 1950s coincided with the publication and widespread popularity of Tolkien's novels. By 1968 the idea of games specifically in the setting of Lord of the Rings would have been entirely natural and predictable.
Has anyone done a "free" version of this, running something like a MythTV or other Linux-based media computer, say, and having it encode a cable signal on the fly to your laptop somewhere?
I suggest looking for companies with good return policies, and giving your business to them when you have a big purchase to make. Costco has always treated me very well with regard to returns, and I go back there. I have returned a digital camera, and received a replacement, because I broke it, and returned a printer, after some months of use, because I didn't like how it was feeding paper anymore. In the second instance they did ask for the manual that came with the printer, but arranged on their own for a replacement for it when I told them I didn't have it anymore.
If enough people make return policy and other consumer-friendly factors part of their purchase decisions, companies will support them.
As to your second point--I agree. Everyone is served by not having companies pass off goods by deceiving consumers. Lawsuits are part of the controls in place to help make sure that doesn't happen (as much). In fact, the alternative would be much larger regulatory bodies policing and enforcing every advertisisg claim, a model I like much less.
Yes. In fact there are all kinds of reasons you can or can't be fired, "at will" is one of those concepts that doesn't change anyone's actual employment rights, but has the effect of making people think they do, and therefore making them more docile. Like the "use at your own risk" signs on rides and so forth.
Slashdot Mirror
Is this the part where I say "you must be new here?"
Hey, this is actually quite interesting. I've heard of winnowing like this for covert channels before but not applied to this situation. It bears some thought.
Maybe I misunderstood, but that's what I thought you were doing--playing against opponents of much lower skill level than you. If you're playing against competitive players, how could they possibly confuse you for a cheat?
People confuse better players for cheaters because their skill is so out of whack with their opponents' that they can't conceive of someone being that much better, without a cheat. But as far as I'm concerned, that's even worse: playing a game against people much worse than you, so you can feel like a big man, is almost the definition of pathetic. I don't really care if they're banned (incorrectly) as cheaters or (correctly) as bullies.
Seriously, man, you can't talk to these people. Like mindless zealots everywhere, they are a tarpit of illogicality; unthinking apologists for anything that comes down the pike. Something you don't like about the holy Macintosh (or emacs, or Python, or anything else that attracts this sort of person)? Must be something wrong with you. And everyone else. And their "ill-behaved" applications and fingers and minds.
They probably think the Thinkpad's little eraser will blow your finger off, too. And a scroll wheel? Man, that fucker will suck you in and grind you up. Focus follows mouse? Get the guillotine, monsieur!
There might be a few people here and there with different reasons. I ultimately decided the iPhone was too expensive, but if I had decided to get it I would definitely have tried to get on line at the AT&T store, because it would have been a gift for someone whose birthday is right now. I don't feel the need to have the latest and greatest thing. I did just get a Wii, but only because I happened to notice it sitting on the shelf.
I think Toy Story 2 probably tells you all you need to about these people, who are fat and smelly to boot.
If I were the designer or creator of something, I would want people to use and enjoy it. Cars should be driven, boats should be sailed, toys should be played with, wine and beer drunk and books read. God, if I ever publish a book, I would love for someone to ask me to sign their dog-eared, partly-ripped, nacho-cheese-sauce-on-page-40 copy.
The analogy that came to my mind was a seventeenth century naval gunnery crew taking down our first moon lander. There's no way I would bet on the lander.
I think it's more like a subcontractor of the construction company, under indirect ownership of a Chilean subsidiary, put graffitti on the walls, and then, egged on by junior-level employees (but not the permanent officers of the general contractor) made it more and more explicit. Then a third guy--Steve--came by and said, "hey, that's pretty funny, but it'll have to come out before the Japanese investors"--did I mention the Japanese investors?--"come over tomorrow." But the subcontractor thought it was so cool that instead of washing it off they carefully taped over it with some paper. No wait, paper is a terrible analogy, let's make it Tyvek house wrap. Yes, Tyvek house wrap... they put some of that over it and then painted over that.
After the building's launch, one of the neighborhood free spirits who's a big fan of the building--maybe security has noticed him hanging around, maybe they haven't: their lunch breaks are fifteen minutes shorter on this job than at their last one, so inevitably they feel less of an obligation to take a really good look at people hanging around. Well, anyway, this smelly hippie starts picking at the walls and finds this covered-up graffitti. He doesn't want to spoil the fun by just ripping the cover off, so what he does is start spreading the word in the smelly hippie underground (and also, this gets out to the underground comics scene and, through the coffee-house poseurs, to the rave and goth kids, much to the chagrin of the smelly hippie) about how to go to the building, pick off the Tyvek house wrap... you know, on second thought maybe it's not like Tyvek house wrap at all, maybe it's a tough, silicone-impregnated paper. Yeah, that's what it is.
So all these people are peeking under the Ty^H^Hsilicone-impregnated paper at this stuff and it starts to get out. The local building code review board gets in trouble because they approved the building and everyone starts a pie-throwing fight--yes, a pie-throwing fight is exactly right--at the press conference about the controversy.
That's just what it was like.
I'm not sure you can make a blanket statement like that. Consider the subject at hand: video game marketing material. Doesn't it seem pretty likely that kids will want to consume any and all video game related material they can?
Personally I suspect the ESRB's demand to take down an AO-rated trailer has something to do with pre-existing agreements between the company, relating to its membership in ESRB, I don't really know of course, just guessing the situation is a little more complicated than might be suggested at first blush.
It's typical to allot roughly twice a movie's production budget on marketing and distribution (even setting aside "funny" Hollywood accounting). Similarly, the gross income of a movie is split with exhibitors. So with that rough rule of thumb, the production budget was $32M, marketing and distribution another $32M, for a total cost of $64M, and the studio saw $31M in their cut of the gross income.
Total, fresh from my ass back-of-the-napkin figures, but yes, the general idea is that Snakes on a Plane didn't do terribly well.
Consider the qualifiers in the parent's post. "Graphic" sex isn't the same as "sex." There are plenty of stories of randy gods seducing women, but they are not graphic, in the sense that today's pornography is.
Similarly, I don't think the parent poster was saying that adults don't view pornography, just that they're not obsessed with it--and if they are, the nature of their obsession is immature. I pretty much agree with that view.
I don't know how it works in New York, but in California, when I was a teenager with a summer job in a restaurant, in theory I was not supposed to serve alcohol.
Even if not encoded in the law--and I'll bet in at least some jurisdictions there is a general circumstance that could be applied for an additional penalty here--I think it would, overall, result in a more likely conviction and a more severe penalty. Any crime that seems worse to a jury is easier to sell to them, and the easier the sell the more likely the conviction, the less likely a plea-bargain (or the greater the penalty that needs to be agreed to in the bargain) and the greater the penalty that can be sought.
I guess you could think of that as market forces, of a kind, at work, rather than regulatory ones.
First off, I'll say that this sounds like an awful law: unconscionably vague, with ridiculous penalties for infractions. I wouldn't stand for it, but fortunately I don't think it will stand. And even more fortunately, I don't live in New York.
But if you argue against any sort of restriction like this (I'll leave aside for the moment whether it's a law or universal observance of a voluntary ratings board), what you're arguing for is decreasing the ability of a parent to decide what their kid will be exposed to. You're arguing for the "right" to sell whatever content you want to my kid without my knowledge.
Advocates of your position argue incessantly for parental responsibility. But that's not what you want. You want me to raise my kids your way (for example, in an irreligious way), exposing them to materials you think are harmless (for example, because I'm a prude and you're not). You want parents to deal with the question of violent video games in the way you think fit, not them. You're arguing to require me to allow my children to buy violent video games, no matter how young, no matter the content of the game, and not to make the decision for my family, as you suggest on the surface.
In a free society there is a tension between the society's responsibility to foster the upbringing of children, the rights of individuals and the rights of parents to be able to carry out their own responsibilities. I think reasonable people can probably agree that it's best to have no special restrictions for the most part, except for a few things that are generally agreed to be objectionable, in which case it's a parent's right to act as gatekeeper for their child and decide what possibly objectionable movies, weapons, drugs, video games go into them.
No one's rights are abrogated by having to prove age to buy liquor, cigarettes, weapons, pornography or other things generally agreed to be questionable for children. On the other hand, the idea of arguing for the absolute right to sell these things to young children without their parents' knowledge is pernicious.
I'd never support making potentially objectionable content illegal. I think the obscenity standards and laws we already have are too much, and the legal framework in which someone like Paul Reubens can be hassled for his collection of vintage magazines (as he was in California), or where it's illegal for an adult to even view "violent pornography" (as in the United Kingdom), or where sexy comic books are seized at the border (as in Canada), or where the government decides that some games may not be sold at all--to adults (as in Australia): these are all offensive to me and the notion of a free society.
But I hardly think having to ask for your violent porn and show you're of age counters anyone's rights. On the contrary, it results in much more being permitted at the extreme, and fewer restrictions on content producers overall. If game companies could be assured that their most violent or sexual games were never landing in the hands of minors, doesn't that free them further to create more violent, sexual or extreme content?
This is actually a very deep question in multiplayer games. Or rather, the answer is clearly "no," but the interesting question is where the limits are placed.
It would be interesting to actually have a structured study of this; as someone who has cleaned out public restrooms for a job it was my experience that the men's room was worse, invariably (for example, I have a hard time imagining that women's restroom have semen on the walls, and in that pair of restrooms there were never smears of shit where there wasn't supposed to be). But it would be nice to actually have an answer, rather than personal anecdotes.
You can't wrap your head around it, really? It seems pretty simple to me: sometimes you need it up, sometimes you need it down; she always needs it down. The toilet is used more often in the down position (even assuming equal bathroom use frequency, which of course isn't the case--she'll use it more), and since you just pissed, it's pretty likely the next person to use it will need it down. And that's not even really the point, the point is that the consequences of a "mistake" are much greater in the one direction (falling in) than in the other (having to wipe up the seat).
Now, you may not agree with the above (I like the lid down solution, myself), but to not understand it? That reveals a complete inability or unwillingness to see things someone else's way, even when it's logical.
A few points:
It varies from woman to woman. There are also funnels and cardboard "helpers" that allow women to direct a stream.
As soon as children are capable of moving around on their own and getting into the toilet they're capable of lifting the lid. To prevent it, you need to latch the toilet seat down.
It's hard to say. The first versions of adventure, with elements taken straight from Tolkien, were only a few years off, and multiplayer worlds with Tolkienian elements only a couple of years after that. Were these developments predictable in 1968? Probably, but only by the right people, not the general public. I doubt the commercial culture around video games and low-cost end-consumer computers seemed all that visible at the time.
However, I don't see the conceptual difference between a video game and, say a role-playing or other sort of game, with respect to whether it was covered by a merchandising agreement. It's interesting that roughly the mid-1970s was the time of genesis for Colossal Cave Adventure, the first MUDs and Dungeons and Dragons; however, Dungeons and Dragons had its roots in miniature wargaming, which was well-established as a pastime since before Tolkien ever wrote his stories (H.G. Wells wrote some of the first rules for resolving miniature combat in 1913). I would be very surprised if no wargamers adopted the backdrop of Tolkien's fantastic wars and battles, especially as the rise in popularity of wargaming in the late 1950s coincided with the publication and widespread popularity of Tolkien's novels. By 1968 the idea of games specifically in the setting of Lord of the Rings would have been entirely natural and predictable.
Has anyone done a "free" version of this, running something like a MythTV or other Linux-based media computer, say, and having it encode a cable signal on the fly to your laptop somewhere?
I suggest looking for companies with good return policies, and giving your business to them when you have a big purchase to make. Costco has always treated me very well with regard to returns, and I go back there. I have returned a digital camera, and received a replacement, because I broke it, and returned a printer, after some months of use, because I didn't like how it was feeding paper anymore. In the second instance they did ask for the manual that came with the printer, but arranged on their own for a replacement for it when I told them I didn't have it anymore.
If enough people make return policy and other consumer-friendly factors part of their purchase decisions, companies will support them.
As to your second point--I agree. Everyone is served by not having companies pass off goods by deceiving consumers. Lawsuits are part of the controls in place to help make sure that doesn't happen (as much). In fact, the alternative would be much larger regulatory bodies policing and enforcing every advertisisg claim, a model I like much less.
Yes. In fact there are all kinds of reasons you can or can't be fired, "at will" is one of those concepts that doesn't change anyone's actual employment rights, but has the effect of making people think they do, and therefore making them more docile. Like the "use at your own risk" signs on rides and so forth.